Say what you like about the European Parliament website, it does at least offer some transparency about what your MEPs have been up to over the last five years. This is the public record of the three MEPs from Northern Ireland.
| MEP | Jim Allister (Ind) (DUP -> TUV) |
Bairbre de Brún (GUE-NGL) (SF) |
Jim Nicholson (EPP-ED) (UUP) |
| Questions asked: | 214 | 41 | 42 |
| Motions Proposed | 0 | 9 | 8 |
| Reports drafted | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Speeches in plenary | 314 | 118 | 122 |
| Written Declarations | 3 | 0 | 4 |
As a point of comparison, my neighbourhood MEP – who is also our deputy mayor, and national chair of her political party – has asked 70 questions, put her name to 10 motions, authored three reports (on consumer policy), spoken 88 times and signed 1 written declaration.
To explain the categories:
Questions asked – fairly obvious, you can ask a question to the European Commission or the European Council. Allister clearly enjoys this most. De Brún sometimes signs onto questions asked by a group of her GUE-NGL colleagues.
Reports drafted – Allister’s zero here is again largely a consequence of his not being in a group, and therefore not being in the way of getting this sort of task; but actually I find all three MEPs a little disppointing; de Brún’s sole report, and both of Nicholson’s are Regional Development Committee reports on EU funds being spent in Northern Ireland. It would be nice if any of them had set their sights on issues other than local pork.
Speeches in plenary – this is potentially a bit misleading since the real arguments happen behind the scenes in the committee meetings, which although public events are not recorded with the same degree of completeness as the plenary sessions. However, it’s fairly clear: Allister speaks more often than the other two combined. It also has to be said that speaking in the chamber is not a good measure of effectiveness in other areas.
Written declarations – included for completeness, these appear about as relevant as Early-Day Motions in the British system.
My conclusion
Allister is a classic "outsider", more interested in using his elected position to promote causes that interest him than in playing the institutional game. Both de Brún and Nicholson have tendencies in this direction as well, but both are also at least partly inside the system; and both appear to have similar levels of impact, despite the fact that de Brún is from a much smaller group.
Er, yes. n4 is odd if n is odd; so is n4 +4 !!!